Documentum lifecycles are time consuming functions since they require a call out to the Java Method Server to perform their actions. We recently ran into an issue on a project where the lifecycle actions were taking an inordinate amount of time. We did some investigation along with our client and discovered an OS setting in Linux that was impacting performance, DEVRANDOM. This parameter describes what random number generator should be used by the linux OS . You can learn more about /dev/random and /dev/urandom here.
EMC released PowerLink notice esg114371 describing how to change the OS parameter in Linux. Depending on the usage of /dev/random or /dev/urandom, the DEVRANDOM parameter is either set as a blocking or unblocking call respectively to the random generator. Changing the parameter to urandom improved performance significantly.
Per the PowerLink notice esg114371, edit the dm_start_<server> script and add these lines to the beginning:
DEVRANDOM=/dev/urandom
export DEVRANDOM
Restart the Content Server and re-test. You should now see much faster response on the apply and promote lifecycle operations.
We’d love to hear about any other Lifecycle performance improvements you know about. Please feel free to share in the responses.
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